modified Apr 13, 2009 by hpk

py.test plugins

Much of py.test's functionality is implemented as a plugin.

Included plugins

You can find the source code of all default plugins in http://bitbucket.org/hpk42/py-trunk/src/tip/py/test/plugin/

plugins that add reporting asepcts

pytest_terminal: default reporter for writing info to terminals

pytest_resultlog: log test results in machine-readable form to a file

plugins for adding new test types

pytest_unittest: run traditional unittest TestCase instances

pytest_doctest: run doctests in python modules or .txt files

pytest_restdoc: provide RestructuredText syntax and link checking

plugins for python test functions

pytest_xfail: provides "expected to fail" test marker

pytest_tmpdir: provide temporary directories to test functions

pytest_plugintester: generic plugin apichecks, support for functional plugin tests

Loading plugins and specifying dependencies

py.test loads and configures plugins at tool startup:

by reading the PYTEST_PLUGINS environment variable and importing the comma-separated list of plugin names.
by pre-scanning the command line for the -p name option and loading the specified plugin before actual command line parsing.
by loading all plugins specified via a pytest_plugins variable in conftest.py files or test modules.

Specifying a plugin in a test module or conftest.py will only lead to activitation when py.test actually sees the directory and the file during the collection process. This is already after command line parsing and there is no try to do a "pre-scan of all subdirs" as this would mean a potentially very large delay. As long as you don't add command line options this detail does not need to worry you.

ensure a plugin is loaded

If you create a conftest.py file with the following content:

pytest_plugins = "pytest_myextension",

then all tests in and below that directory will consult the hooks defined in the imported pytest_myextension. A plugin may specify its dependencies via another pytest_plugins definition.